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OK, so before I get into the details, a little background going in - my business has really picked up this year, so I've been pretty busy - so busy in fact that once again, I hadn't been able to hit Atlantic City even once since our last Vegas trip back in January [after having gone once or twice a month for the last 20 years or so] - and on top of that, this trip was originally supposed to happen in mid-April. Then late-April. Then early-May. I had a potential client that kept dicking me around on when he wanted me to come out - and I kept putting up with it because it was going to be a pretty big account, but eventually I just gave up waiting for him to figure it out and blocked a week off my schedule and told him it was completely unavailable - and this turned out to be a positive because he wound up committing to the week before we were coming out to Vegas and by the Wednesday before the Sunday we left I wound up getting his signature on the dotted line - which gave me just enough time to call out to credit services at Aria & bump my line up to $80K as a way of celebrating having finally locked him down as a client - plus I'd also already opened a second $60K line at the Palazzo for this trip as well [more on that later] - so between how busy I've been & how much pent-up gambling I had in me because of it, I was once again totally chomping at the bit to get into town by the time the first day of the trip finally arrived...

Day One [Part 1] - Ask Jeeves?

We had a pretty early flight out of Philly - leaving 7:35AM Philly time, getting into town 10:18AM Vegas time - and actually wound up touching down 13 minutes ahead of schedule - which, if you've ever done much flying in and out of PHL, you know is a good omen in its own right [at PHL, a bird can shit on the runway and your flight gets delayed for an hour!]. We breezed throught the airport - no wait on the bags either! - and were already in the limo and heading to Aria by 11 o'clock.

Now, the big question going into this trip was whether or not we'd be getting put up in a Sky Villa - I knew it was a stretch, but had asked anyway - and judging by the diplomatically non-committal answer my host had given me, going in I already figured the real answer was probably no - which it was. Once again, we were in a 1-bedroom "panoramic" penthouse Sky suite - although this time, we were on the 56th floor (last floor below the Sky villas) vs. the 39th floor last time - and I always like to think the higher the floor you get means something, even if it most likely doesn't.

Apparently, someone had been paying attention to what we were drinking last trip, as waiting for us on the bar when we got into the suite was a bottle of my favorite single-malt Scotch [Lagavulin] and my wife's favorite Bourbon [Maker's Mark] - and then, literally less than a minute or two after we'd gotten in, we got a little bit of a surprise when the suite's doorbell rang - I opened it, and in walked our butler - yes, apparently our host "felt badly she wasn't able to put you in a sky villa this visit, so she arranged for you to still have access to villa services during your stay". Sweet - I didn't even know they did that Suddenly why we were on the 56th floor seemed to make a little bit more sense - probably easier for the butler staff that way.

He asked if he could unpack our bags - which of course, we obliged - and then after he was finished asked if we'd like him to bring us something for lunch - I went to go and get the menu and he stopped me - "I can bring you anything you want, even if it's not on the menu, we'll see if we can make it for you" - now, you'd think that would be an easier question to answer than it actually was - but eventually I settled on asking for a lobster salad sandwich and some french fries, while my wife asked for a spinach salad with hot bacon dressing - plus, for good measure, we asked for a pitcher of Arnold Palmers - and off he went to get it, coming back with it about 20-25 minutes later - which I thought was pretty damn impressive, considering except for the french fries, none of those things are on the standard Aria room service menu from what I can remember - not to mention travel time to wherever he went to pick it up and bring it back from.

The only thing that made it apparent it wasn't "true" butler service was he did still give me a bill to sign - though after reading Natedog's TR's I'm wondering if "true" butler service where you never see a bill still exists for any level of player - and for the record, an off-menu lobster salad sandwich, a spinach salad and a pitcher of Arnold Palmers billed out for $96 before tax & tip - then before he left gave us each his card and let us know that if there was anything we needed at any time - room service, housekeeping, transportation, reservations - that we should call villa services directly. So I rang my host, left her a voice-mail thanking her for the little surprise, and then skipped our usual post-arrival nap and headed down to the casino - I'd been waiting too long not to get my gamble on right away!

So far, this trip was starting off on a roll - a flight from PHL that actually arrived early, surprise butler service - so I strolled into Carta Privada, ordered up a Lagavulin on the rocks, pulled down a $20K marker, and started playing blackjack, two hands @ $1K each - now it was time to find out if all this good luck was going to continue on to include the action at the tables as well...

Off the bat, my inaugural session at the tables started out with more of a whimper than the bang I'd hoped for - not that I was losing, mind you - but after the first hour I'd bounced around even for the most part, never feeling motivated to get my bets up to more than $1500/hand and not really getting many opportunities to double or split, either. Then, in the second hour, I started to catch a little fire - so by the end of the second hour I was up to about $2500 on each hand - but I also had a few Scotches in me, and combined with not having taken a nap after getting in it was starting to catch up with me - so after about two hours total I bought back my marker and walked away up $12.5K for the afternoon. Nothing to write home about, but nothing to sneeze at, either.

I wandered over to the high-limit slot room to collect the wife - and found her sitting at $25 machine - pretty rich for her blood - and found out she'd hit almost immediately for $7600 on a $5 machine after she first got down and had decided to upgrade to the $25 machines - but after switching to the higher machines had no luck, so it turns out I'd decided to collect her at the right time, because when I got there she'd given back all but $600 of it.

We got back up to the room and my wife became convinced that while we were gone someone had come in and pressed all of our clothes while we were gone - frankly, I couldn't tell the difference - but I guess it wasn't out of the realm of possibility, either. Then we took a quick soak in the tub together and then hit the hay for a little nap before dinner.

We normally do Chinese on Saturday nights at home, but decided to skip it the night before the trip and had made reservations at Jasmine at Bellagio for our first night's dinner instead. We got up around six and at first contemplated staying in and seeing what we could get brought up to the suite for dinner but decided we felt refreshed enough to head out - and headed down and then trammed it over to Bellagio. Bellagio's casino was much emptier than it normally is and we had some time to kill - plus I realized I'd left my afternoon's profits in the safe back at the suite - so I stopped by Bellagio's credit office, let them know I had a line at Aria and asked them to open me a line at the B as well - I was a little concerned if they'd be able to or not - it was Sunday night after all - but they called over to Aria and hooked it up no problem. Then it was off to Jasmine for dinner, where we got a great table with an excellent view of the fountains. Dinner was great - but I'll save the details on that for a seperate full review in the restaurants section [keep an eye out if you're interested].

Anyway, my spidey-sense must've been tingling when I'd decided to stop by Bellagio's credit office before dinner - because after dinner, I saw that one of their roulette wheels was hitting my numbers pretty heavy [I play a standard set of numbers at roulette every spin - yeah, I'm anal like that] and decided to stop & play - so I pulled down a $10K marker and started spreading my numbers, black chips @ $1300/spin total - and boom, first spin 11! [my heaviest bet number, with $100 straight up & $100 on each of the splits with the 8 & 10]

Second spin - 11 again! So now I was doubled up - $200 on each, $2600 out total - 10! [$200 straight up, $200 on the split with the 11] Three spins, three hits, up $20K Next spin I upped it to $300 on each bet [$3900 total] - and promptly lost the next two spins, but I kept up at $3900 anyway - and hit another 11! I was now up just shy of $30K in 6 spins - so I bought back my marker and continued playing with pure gravy - I kept betting at $3900/spin and promptly lost the next seven spins in a row - I now only had $2600 left - so I put out $2600 - and hit another 11! - I went one more go at $3900 and lost when the wife showed up - she'd run through the entire $1600 she'd brought over at the slots just as quickly as I'd been on my little streak - so figuring I should quit while I was ahead for a change I threw $1500 to the dealer and headed back over to Aria with $9K profit in my pocket - good thing we'd stuck with our original dinner plans after all

So after tramming it back over to Aria I gave the wife $1500 of my Bellagio winnings and then headed up to the suite to pick up the $12.5K in chips I'd stashed from the afternoon's session, telling her I wanted to play more blackjack - then I headed back down and went into high limit baccarat instead :evillaugh [for anyone who doesn't remember, my wife hates when I play baccarat]. I started out doing my usual progression [3-4-6-8-12-16-20] with $500 chips [so $1500, $2000, etc] - things started out middle of the road - not too choppy, but no really long streaks on either side either - so again, I bounced around even for the first hour or so. The first shoe finished, and then the second shoe started with a bang - one particularly long player streak hit and I managed to hit $10K/hand & win twice at that level before it finally broke - but that one streak had put me up about $20K in about 10 minutes after a whole hour of bouncing around even. After that, there were a number of short streaks to each side with relatively little chop - didn't get up to $10K/hand again, but a couple of them made it up to the $4K & $6K levels or so in my progression - so I played out the whole shoe and by the time I headed upstairs for the night I was up an even $50K for the first day including what I'd won in the afternoon & at Bellagio minus tips & the $1500 I'd thrown the wife's way earlier.

Wow I would call that first day in total something to write home about!!!

awesome start. That is a huge roulette run!!! Just sent a link to your TR to my ex-bro-in-law. He has a tattoo of 11 from Vegas from a similar run of 11's, albeit lower stakes (and at Slots-A-Fun rather than Bellagio).

Do you play at their single-zero wheel? I do occasionally, although my numbers are a section of the wheel from the double-zero wheel so I prefer the layout despite the worse odds.

I'll keep an eye out for your Jasmine review. Staying at Bellagio in a couple weeks and I'm a big fan of Chinese so perhaps its time to give it a whirl.

Wow I would call that first day in total something to write home about!!!

awesome start. That is a huge roulette run!!! Just sent a link to your TR to my ex-bro-in-law. He has a tattoo of 11 from Vegas from a similar run of 11's, albeit lower stakes (and at Slots-A-Fun rather than Bellagio).

Do you play at their single-zero wheel? I do occasionally, although my numbers are a section of the wheel from the double-zero wheel so I prefer the layout despite the worse odds.

I'll keep an eye out for your Jasmine review. Staying at Bellagio in a couple weeks and I'm a big fan of Chinese so perhaps its time to give it a whirl.

Click to expand...

Yes, I play single-zero - though I will also play double-zero if I walk by a table & see my numbers have been hitting on it - since my numbers are all important dates in my life & not part of any sector play, it doesn't matter which wheel I bet them on - but I still prefer single-zero if given a choice because of the slightly reduced HA.

Jasmine was very good - comparing it to Blossom at Aria, the food at Blossom was more adventurous and authentic Chinese, but the service, room & view when paired with still very good food at Jasmine probably made For a better overall experience at Jasmine.